Cyberbullying is so bad that it drives some kids to suicide

The arrest of a young boy at my kids' elementary school just before school let out for the summer caused quite stir in the community. The 12-year-old was taken into custody after apparently bringing a "hit list" of students he reportedly intended to "kill, injure, or let go."

Authorities, tipped off about the sixth grader's notebook list by another student, discovered it in his locker. Sources say the journal was eloquently written but appeared to fall apart toward the end as the boy evidently contemplated suicide.

Police who interviewed the boy, new to the school district, found him to be very articulate, polite, and well-spoken. Like so many other children, he supposedly came from a broken home where the environment was presumably as stressful as that in school.

The boy was reputedly the target of peer bullying. There it is again, the curse of school-aged kids everywhere. But the traditional at-school bullying is increasingly bested by an escalating phenomenon known as cyberbullying. That's an imprecise label for a range of online activities from vicious texting to sexually harassing group sites on the Web. The high-tech trend allows modern-day bullies to raise adolescent torment to new thresholds of pain.

And the "willful and repeated harm" inflicted through phones and computers, as one research group put it, lasts much longer than the meanness kids deal with all the time from school toughs. Some studies suggest as many as one in five middle-school students has already been affected by cyberbullying.

But even researchers who lean toward lower estimates don't discount the seriousness of the growing threat. And neither should parents of elementary, middle school, or high school students.

My grade school kids are surrounded by classmates who carry cellphones. The little darlings beg for the ubiquitous devices and whine about being the only dorks without one.

Yet their square mom is unmoved and more unsettled than ever about the prevalence of personal electronic communication among the young and younger. Most of them don't need the latest in digital technology to stay in touch with their parents.

They need it to be cool, to be connected, to gossip, to pick on a weaker kid. When they're not tapping out a barrage of texts, they're on their home computer talking to each other on social networking sites.

They feel brave, in control, able to say whatever they please with no face-to-face contact to fear. It's a lot easier to fight with text messages or be as mean as you want on Facebook and hide your prints.

Plus, kids relish the challenge to post and create and provoke. Technically, they're geniuses when it comes to online sophistication. They left their dumbfounded parents in the rear-view mirror eons ago.

But developmentally, they're babies playing with fire. It's up to parents, first and foremost, to put out the flames. No ordinary, immature, unpredictable kid, especially at the elementary level, needs a social network site or a device to text nonstop.

It's also time the law caught up with cyberbullying to forcefully combat the Internet scourge of youth that is gaining traction with devastating consequences. The rash of recent adolescent suicides linked to bullying in cyberspace stand as a harsh indictment of those who would pretend it's not that bad.

The sneering, graphic, intimidating, and cruelly demeaning texts that preteens are sending to emulate the biting online commentary of their elders in middle school and high school, is wrong and must end.

But the problem is huge and requires more than an addendum to the anti-bullying policy in a school handbook that nobody reads. Local districts need to incorporate cyberbullying prevention programs into curriculums, starting with grade school.

How far schools can go in explicitly prohibiting and disciplining cyberbullying - when it most often occurs off-campus - is a thornier issue that demands legal clarification from the courts and statutory guidance.

Ohio is one of a few states considering legislation to expand school conduct codes to include student behavior away from school grounds. Lawmakers in both houses of the Ohio General Assembly have proposed measures that might go a long way in protecting students.

Please help. It's so easy to damage and break a child with cruelty. The cyber savagery cleaving school districts everywhere is the worst, tragically hitting home and stirring reaction whenever a bullied, emotionally fragile youngster chooses death over online harassment or comes to school with a hit list.

Marilou Johanek is a Blade commentary writer.

Contact her at: mjohanek@theblade.com